Buffalo Archives - Page 16 of 24

November 29, 2010October 3, 2021

Stop the dreading!

Hey all! I hope everyone has had an enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend. More to come later on mine, of course, but this annoyed me greatly when I went to the Buffalo News website on Friday morning. I saw this headline, with the text right under it:

On Black Friday, forecast is for white

Southtowns, at least, are expecting 1st snow as winter makes its long-dreaded return to WNY.

The Southtowns are the suburbs south of Buffalo, as you might expect. (Thus, the location of Casa Jaquandor.) So what’s irritating about this? That qualifying phrase in the sub-head: long-dreaded.

I, for one, like snow just fine. Sure, I get tired of it in March, but I also get tired of hot weather in September but it’s fine in June. Point is, there is entirely too much hating of the snow around here, and there is entirely not enough embracing it. Every time we openly admit that we “dread” the snow, as far as I’m concerned, we’re openly admitting as a region that we really wished we were someplace else.

Well, I don’t wish I was someplace else. I like it here, snow and all, so let’s stop acting like the snow is this awful thing, OK? You know what, Buffalo? Maybe the rest of the country would stop acting as though Buffalo is a godforsaken snowy wasteland all months of the year if we stopped acting like it is too.

Snow rules. Embrace it! And those that don’t want to? Charlotte, NC beckons.

End of rant.

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November 28, 2010October 3, 2021

Runaway trains! Antiques! Food! Pies! What a weekend!

(UPDATED below.)

I spent a muchly-deserved, muchly-anticipated long weekend over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a great time. Details and photos and such after the break. This is a “daily life” type of post, with a bunch of photos. But there’s also a punchline at the end which you may find amusing, if you’ve ever thought I warranted some kind of “just desserts”….

Thanksgiving Morning here at Casa Jaquandor is a lazy affair. The Wife and I are often quite tired heading into this particular weekend, as our jobs both tend to pick up and become very hectic as the Holiday Season approaches. We’re always grateful to have a morning that consists of lazing about, watching the Macy’s Parade, drinking coffee, and eating donuts. It’s especially relaxing because…we don’t cook T-giving dinner.

For the last five or six years, our tradition on Thanksgiving has been to eat out. With my parents not really feeling like cooking the massive meal anymore, and with their drive to our home being about an hour, we’ve decided it’s best just to go to a local restaurant. We tried a couple of different places early on, and were disappointed, but then The Wife and I discovered Danny’s a few years back. We first went there on an October night several years ago, whereupon we discovered that they were open for Thanksgiving with special meals, including a turkey dinner. We loved their set-up, and we had a winner. So that’s where we go. This year, they did away with the “special Thanksgiving menu” and instead set up a buffet line, with all the usual Thanksgiving selections. (Almost all, actually — The Wife didn’t get her beloved green bean casserole.)

After the mid-afternoon meal (when we sat down, the Lions led the Patriots 17-10, but when we left, the Patriots had won 45-24), my parents absconded with The Daughter for a couple of days at their home, allowing The Wife and I some quality time together. This was extremely welcome! The Wife and I have, in the past, found it entirely too easy to lose sight of making time for one another — especially since for years we’ve worked opposite shifts at our respective jobs — so now, we tend to aggressively plan our time together and make the most of it when it comes. And we crammed a lot into the 48 hours we had together!

After T-giving dinner, it’s become our own little tradition to go to a movie. This year we selected Unstoppable, the runaway-train movie with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. But since the show-time was still ninety minutes away, we were able to run home and change into more comfortable clothes.

Among the many virtues of bib overalls is that of all pants, they are by far the most comfortable to wear in the hours following an enormous meal.

So we went to see Unstoppable, which we loved. I’ll have a full review of the movie up sometime soon, but I do want to note that the Regal Cinemas in the new addition at the Walden Galleria Mall is a great place to see a movie. They’ve somehow made the concept of stadium seating even better, with seats that rock a bit and armrests/cupholders that swing up and out of the way, which makes for easier hand-holding with one’s sweetie during a movie. Yay! (We tend to like the action pictures on T-giving Day. Not sure why.)

The next morning, of course, was Black Friday. We’re not the types who go out at four in the morning to find the best deals on stuff; we do go out shopping a bit, but later on, after more morning relaxing and coffee.

Later on we ventured out to do some shopping. JCPenney (clothes for the kid), Barnes&Noble (book ideas for the kid — but none purchased), JoAnn Fabrics (sewing supplies for some of The Wife’s projects), Home Depot (bought a Dremel 4000 rotary tool, huzzah!), and a few other stops. We had lunch at Panera Bread, where I looked kind of bored:

We also planned to make a nice dinner that night of steak, and squash, so it was off to a grocery store to pick up those items among a few others, including…three coconut cream pies.

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November 19, 2010October 3, 2021

All prophecies come true if you wait long enough….

Fifteen years ago, I was in Year Two of what would be a four-year stint working at Pizza Hut in Olean, NY as a shift manager. One thing I remember from back then was the way upper management was constantly exhorting us to compare ourselves to other restaurants. “Are we as good as McDonald’s? Are we as good as Burger King?” And so on. And it wasn’t just the chains that were already in place, either — they were constantly kvetching over the places that hadn’t even come into our region yet.

For instance, there’s a chain of fast-food Italian restaurants called Fazoli’s that announced that it was coming into Western New York, and they were coming hard, with lots of locations. Cue the ensuing panic amongst the Pizza Hut folks. We had to be on our toes! We had to be ready! Well, Fazoli’s came…and went. They opened, there was much fanfare, they operated for a while, and within five or six years, they all closed. So much for them.

There was an even scarier chain out there, though. This chain had the higher-ups at PH quaking in their boots. We heard their name invoked at every major meeting we attended, and our store managers brought back the latest rumors from every major meeting they attended. This other chain was coming. They were expanding very quickly, and when they finally touched down in WNY, we were going to have all we could handle keeping our business. The chain?

Papa John’s.

Which, as it happened, never came.

There was never a Papa John’s, not one, while we worked for PH, not even as late as fall 2000, when The Wife left PH to work somewhere else. We wouldn’t even see a Papa John’s until fall of 2002, when we moved to Syracuse. We ordered from there once, we kinda liked it, but it wasn’t anything special. And wouldn’t you know it — Syracuse’s two or three Papa John’s locations closed while we were living there. And six months later we moved back to Buffalo anyway.

Flash forward to this morning, when one of my Facebook friends posted something about the Papa John’s pizza they ate last night. It seems that as of two months or so ago, Papa John’s has finally touched down in Western New York. With a single location. I, of course, no longer care, having (a) left Pizza Hut as an employee almost thirteen years ago, and (b) having pretty much sworn off chain pizza anyway.

But I do wonder if the local PH higher-ups are still nervous about Papa John’s.

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November 16, 2010October 3, 2021

It’s like the song, George! Downtown! There’s your answer!

Here at Casa Jaquandor, our regular day to go to the library is Thursday. That’s carved in stone. We always go on Thursday. Except for weeks when Thursday is some kind of holiday, such as the upcoming Thanksgiving Day…or last week, when Veterans Day fell on a Thursday. So, we decided to postpone until Saturday, and instead of going to our own Orchard Park Public Library, we headed instead into downtown Buffalo and the Central Library. We’ve been to the Central Library a few times, but not in a while; we like to get down there a few times a year. One great thing about living in a county where all the libraries are members of a larger County Library system is that you have access to all the books, county-wide; but that’s only a help if you know what you want. For browsing, you’re limited to what’s available at the library you actually visit. Now, the Orchard Park Library is a lovely facility and over the years we’ve spent a lot of time browsing there. But the Central Library is something else.

First, though, we had to actually get down there, into downtown Buffalo. And that meant…Route 5 and the Skyway, which is actually our favorite route into the city anyway. Below the fold are photos from the day.

Route 5 leads past a lot of Buffalo’s industrial past. First, you come to Lackawanna and the steel mills that no longer do much of anything at all.

These kinds of urban ruins are endlessly fascinating. All these giant machines used to be so much of the source of money in Buffalo…and now they just sit there, idle, unused, slowly oxidizing.

And then, we’re past the former steel foundries and we’re into the region of Buffalo’s earlier mega-industry, when the city was the shipping terminus on the eastern Great Lakes. Next up are the grain elevators.

Finally, it’s up and over the Skyway itself. This is a very tall bridge that rises up over Buffalo’s inner waterfront, presumably built this way to accommodate the huge ships that once pulled into the inlets to load and offload at the grain elevators. Nowadays, there are almost never any ships down there, and the Skyway itself has become a source of much debate ’round these parts; many folks think it should be demolished and replaced with ground-level highways and drawbridges, in order to allow for easier access to the waterfront and in order to remove from Buffalo’s dormant waterfront an enormous eyesore. I, personally, don’t have much of a dog in that fight; the Skyway’s not the most attractive thing and it does cast a large shadow on the ground, but it does provide a fast way into the city from where we live, and lots of cities manage to have bright, vibrant waterfronts even with expressways and big bridges towering over it all. (Toronto is one of them.)

Plus, there’s the view you get when you come over the top of the Skyway, with the entire city of Buffalo looming right before you.

After a bit of driving around downtown ~~trying to remember which street we were looking for~~ admiring the architecture, we arrived at the Central Library and headed inside — but not before finding this fountain, which we hadn’t seen on our last visit (because we’d gone into the library through another entrance).

It’s a beautiful object. The water wasn’t running, I suppose because of the onset of colder temperatures. I did find the placement here kind of odd — the fountain’s just sitting there, at a street corner. I wondered why it wasn’t placed on the Library plaza or in Lafayette Square, across the street.

And then it was into the Library, where we spent about two hours, reading and browsing. I spent some time in the Mark Twain Room, which is devoted to the display of various ephemera pertaining to the great writer. I loved his chess table:

But what really caught my eye, over which I lingered for some time, were the pages from the manuscript of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I find something very appealing about seeing these pages: Twain’s neat cursive script, his large hand contrasted with the small paper he used, and his on-the-fly editing. A writer’s work-in-progress always fascinates me — you can see the progress, right there, on those slightly faded pages.

A trip to the library is mainly, though, about browsing the stacks.

It’s funny how, over the years, that particular stance there has become totally natural to me. It comes from almost four decades of working my way through bookstores, libraries, and my own bookshelves at home. It’s the rightward head-tilt I adopt in order to better read the titles on the spines.

Years ago, my sister took a trip to England for one reason or another — her first, actually, she’s been there many times since — and she brought me home a copy of a musical score. Mozart’s Requiem, if memory serves. I still have that score, in my parents’ home somewhere, along with all of my other scores which will come home with me one day when we have space enough to house them. But the score was printed in the UK, so the title on the spine was printed in the reverse of the way we do it here in the US: the title ran up, not down, relative to the front cover. I suppose if I ever take a journey to England, I’ll have to recalibrate my neck for their bookstores, the same way I’ll have to recalibrate my driving for their roads!

This led to a bit of experimentation with self-portraiture, whilst perusing the cookbooks:

And you never know when you’ll find a book seemingly tailored exactly to your interests!

Yup, a book on donuts. In fact, they had several books on donuts. I checked out two. Yay, donuts!

When we finally left the library, the daylight hours were waning quickly. The view of Lafayette Square was very pretty, though:

And then it was back to the car, and back to the Skyway. Over the Buffalo Naval Park (note to self: Go to the Naval Park! It’s ridiculous that you’ve never been there!)….

And along the lakeshore as the sun began to set over Lake Erie.

On the way back, it was back past the steel mills and the neighborhoods in their shadow.

These neighborhoods always look sad to me. I suppose that many years ago, they were the homes of families whose fathers and husbands worked in those now-dormant mills. Now, they’re houses that have outlived the reason they were built there.

And lastly, the Ford plant in Hamburg. This factory is still going strong, although it somehow manages to end up on the “endangered list” every few years. We’ll see what happens, I suppose.

Such was our day.

(And, between The Wife and I, we actually managed to max out my library card! Time to read some of this stuff.)

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October 30, 2010October 3, 2021

Ultracalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Mary Poppins at Shea’s Buffalo!, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

See what I did there? It’s “ultra”. One step up from “super”. Take that, Mary Poppins!

Which brings me to the topic here: Mary Poppins, the stage musical, which we were lucky enough to see live at Shea’s Buffalo a couple of weeks ago. (Thanks to tickets provided by the lovely Jennifer Smith, who always manages to make the magic happen!)

I love going to see shows and we don’t get to see nearly enough of them, so I was excited to go to this one. I haven’t been in Shea’s in seven years — last time was for a play The Daughter’s preschool class attended — and before that, not since 1999 when we went to see Phantom of the Opera. That’s too long. Now, some of that time, we didn’t even live in Buffalo, and other times, finances made going to see shows about as possible as launching ourselves to Mars. Nowadays, though, going to Shea’s to see a show or two isn’t off the table as an option. (If only there would be a full-scale touring revival of Les Miz…!)

But as excited as I was, I was also a bit nervous about this one. Mary Poppins is one of my favorite Disney films of all, and while it’s rightly seen as a classic, it tends to be seen as more of a classic family or children’s movie than one of the truly great movie musicals, which is what it is (in addition to the other things). I was somewhat fearful of the translation of a beloved movie to the stage.

For the most part, though, this fear was laid aside. The stage show, it turns out, is not a simple transposition of movie to stage show with a couple of new numbers inserted; instead, it goes its own way at several points. The film was, after all, merely based on a series of children’s books written in the 1920s; thus, the stage show was able to retain quite a few of the movie’s best songs, but was also able to incorporate the new ones by using material from the source books that the film didn’t. This made for a show that was both familiar and different.

The bare bones of the story is the same: a well-to-do — but not rich — family in London is in need of a nanny for its two nice, well-meaning, but not terribly well-behaved children. Nannies have apparently come and gone, but it’s not until a very special nanny comes along that the kids meet their match. That nanny’s name is Mary Poppins, and she’s the type of nanny who makes entrances by flying in on the handle of her umbrella and toting around a satchel that contains things like six-foot-tall coat racks. Mary takes quick charge of the kids, showing them somehow that cleaning one’s room can be fun (no, I’ve never bought into her logic on this one, either) and showing them around London where they have some very odd adventures.

Along the way — and this is the real point of departure from the movie — we get a good look at the trials and tribulations of the parents, George and Winifred, both of whom are having existential struggles of their own. George is worried about providing for his family, while Winifred is worried about her role as the mother. George works at the bank, as in the film and books, where he suffers flashes of idealism but often buckles down before authority. Frankly, a lot of this material struck me as being fairly dull, and I would have preferred the more whimsically odd bank of the film, where young Michael inadvertently causes a run on the bank and where the story’s ultimate moment of epiphany comes from a humorless character suddenly getting a joke. Unfortunately, that joke (“I once met a man with a wooden leg named Smith.” “What’s the name of his other leg?”) is not in the stage show. Nor is the wonderful sequence involving Uncle Albert, a man who laughs so much that he levitates to the ceiling when he laughs and then can’t get down.

The stage show blends many of the wonderful songs from the film with a more modernized kind of storyline, occasionally with odd results. When young Michael opines of one particularly nasty nanny that “She probably ate her young”, it was a funny line — but it also had me thinking, “Oh, come now, no kid in Victorian England is going to talk like that.” The denouement of that particular storyline — when George’s earlier decision to give a loan to a guy who looks like a waste of money turns out to have been a brilliant business decision — felt so predetermined as to seem almost fake. It had none of the effectiveness of George’s epiphany in the film, when he loses his job at the bank and realizes that his family is more important, anyway. I really missed how “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” is transformed from the number where George finally plays with his children, into a number for Bert the chimneysweep.

Also, the complex lyrics of the original songs (by the amazing Sherman Brothers) occasionally seem out-of-place in a more modern type of story as this. I kept thinking of the first song of the film, in which Winifred sings of her work as a suffragette. Of course, would kids these days even know what a suffragette was? Probably not. But the show’s setting suffers a bit, thus.

Technically, though, Mary Poppins works wonderfully. I loved the set design, with the Banks house looking like a giant dollhouse that literally opens up to fill the stage, and other stage effects such as the scene changes that take place as seamlessly as any I can remember. The two show-stopping numbers — “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “Step In Time” — both brought the house down, and my favorite Mary Poppins song, “Feed the Birds”, survived the translation to stage just beautifully. Another number, taking place in a London park and involving naked Greek statues come to life, was — well, I found it a bit distracting, because from my balcony seat, I kept thinking, “Is that statue really naked? Is there a guy wearing a costume with a marble phallus really dancing around on the stage right now?!”

(Oh, come on. If you saw the show, you were thinking it, too!)

The focus is on the Sherman Bros. songs, while the new songs (“Practically Perfect” and “Anything Can Happen” among them) work nicely enough. But there’s never any mystery as to what we really want to hear, is there?

As for Shea’s Buffalo itself, well, it’s such a beautiful theater. Just a wonderful place. I love the ambience, the ornate atmosphere, the pre-show music on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, everything about it. Although I did think that the concessions folks, selling candy and soft drinks during intermission, missed an opportunity to tie in their wares to the feature attraction. Wouldn’t you agree that when selling M&Ms at a theater where Mary Poppins is playing, the price should be “tuppence a bag”?

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October 22, 2010October 3, 2021

A Vacation Report (or, Recent Adventures in Overalls)

A couple of weeks back, I took a short vacation. OK, it was actually a five-day weekend, but I called it a vacation, because that’s what it felt like. Below is a really long recitation of stuff I did on that vacation, complete with lots of photos, so it’s after the break.

:: I went for several walks in the woods, one alone and one with The Wife.

The one I undertook solo was a visit to one of my favorite Western New York spots, the Charles Burchfield Nature and Art Center, located in West Seneca, NY. I’ve blogged about this place before, but it’s just a fantastic area. It’s a small park tucked into a forest beside Buffalo Creek as it runs through one of Buffalo’s larger suburbs. It’s right next to one of the busier roads around here (Union Rd.), and yet, once you venture away from the park area and the playground into the woods proper, it becomes surprisingly serene and quiet. Trails lead away from a nice playground in several directions, a few going to the creekside, and a few going into the woods. The Burchfield Nature and Art Center (“BNAC” for short, the rest of the way in this post) always seems bigger to me than it really is. There’s a lot packed into a small space here.

Anyhow, I hadn’t visited the BNAC before in the fall, so I decided to throw on a pair of overalls, grab my camera and little tripod thingie, and head on out. And yet another plug for the utility of overalls, as my camera and tripod thingie tucked nicely into the rule pocket on the right leg!

As this was late September, the turning of the leaves was just starting to hit its stride:

I was there on an overcast fall day, but it never rained, and the light was still bright enough for the emergent fall colors to pop. The view above looks across Buffalo Creek to the other side (Clinton St. runs atop that embankment). The creek here is very shallow, not very rocky, and the water moves pleasantly quickly, which makes for a lovely wading stream during the warmer months. This time of year, though, the water is starting to chill down a bit.

These signs must be fairly new; I don’t recall seeing them there before:

There are a couple of interesting features in the midst of the walking trails, aside from the Leaves o’Three and the rushing waters of Buffalo Creek. For one thing, there is a beautiful, and big, gazebo.

There’s a picnic table there, which is covered with the usual extracurricular writings:

I thought it funny to note the juxtaposition of a Bible quote with “Smoke Weed!” But then, I’m an overgrown hippie to begin with.

More walking, then, and exploring the wooden walkways of the BNAC (which are elevated two or three feet above the ground):

The BNAC, at one point, is next to a graveyard. That enhances the peacefulness, I suppose.

Another odd structure on the BNAC grounds is an apparent “meditation temple” or something like that:

Of course, I had to oblige my Buddhist overlords:

(No, I have no idea if there’s anything Buddhist at all about the meditation thing, or about the goofy poses I struck for the camera. Sheesh!)

I spent a lot of time looking up:

At what, I don’t know.

The BNAC stands, as I understand it, on the site of a number of former settlements, some of the infrastructure of which are still visible, at least in part. In the middle of the park, I came across a fenced area that is the site of a graveyard that is so old that it’s completely overgrown by now.

In the time I was there, I only saw two other people. One was a woman who must have been a volunteer; she was sweeping leaves from the paths as her little dog followed along behind. The other was just some guy, walking through. Other than that, I had the whole place to myself. How wonderful!

:: I still had some time that day before The Daughter got home from school, so I went to visit one of my favorite places in the hometown, the old Orchard Park train station.

The place was pretty magical when I visited last winter, but this time, I wanted to see what it was like in the warmer months. Naturally, I waited until the warmer months were almost completely over, but I got there!

Most striking are the well-tended flowerbeds:

I spotted this sign this time, and I have no idea what it means:

Even though the day was pretty cloudy, for some reason the light in these two photos came out really striking:

Walking past the window, I noticed that the mannequin inside was wearing a hickory-striped cap and a burgundy shirt. And I was wearing hickory-striped overalls over a burgundy shirt. Whoa….

:: Walk-in-the-woods #2 was with The Wife to Chestnut Ridge Park.

Don’t ask me why I seem to be scowling so much! I really don’t know why my default facial expression seems to be a scowl, but there’s not much I can do about it at this point.

Anyway, we were trying to hike to the Eternal Flame Falls in the park. This is a waterfall whose main distinction, other than sheer beauty for being a waterfall, is the fact that natural gas seeps from the ground here, so behind the waterfall itself you can see a small “eternal flame” burning. (Or if it’s out, you can light it.) We didn’t get there, unfortunately; we took a wrong turn and ended up following the wrong trail, which was disappointing. We’ll get back there eventually, and see that flame, but it was still a lovely day of forest walking.

:: Later that day we left for on overnight jaunt to Ithaca, NY, and the annual Apple Harvest Festival therein. The Apple Fest is a typical outdoor festival, with lots of crafts tents, lots of food, lots of entertainment, and lots of people.

Among other things, we ate bratwurst:

And we bemoaned the fact that we discovered this joint after we were already full:

There’s a wonderful toy store there, where we always drop in for a bit of kid shopping. This year they seemed to have a lot more “odd” toys than in past years, such as this Stir Fry Set for kids!

And Ithaca is known for having lots and lots of bookstores, including my favorite used bookstore ever, Autumn Leaves Books:

Here I am, a few days later, after we got home, with the books I bought on this trip:

I should probably start looking into some kind of support group.

The books, from top down:

The Sardonyx Net, Elizabeth Lynn. Used. Bought because…the cover was cool. (You can do that, you know.)

Zoe’s Tale, John Scalzi. New. Bought because I haven’t given Scalzi any money lately.

The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss. New. I’ve heard good things about this one.

Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons. Used. This was on a rack labeled “Everything for a buck” at Autumn Leaves. When I plunked in down on the counter, the guy did a spit-take and said, “Geez, this wasn’t supposed to be out there!” Oh well! My gain.

Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn. Adapted to graphic novel. New. I bought this because I had a coupon that knocked the price down quite a lot.

RASL, Jeff Smith. I like Jeff Smith a lot. I wasn’t blown away by the first few issues of this, but maybe it gets better.

The Hobbit, JRRT. Used. This is the Annotated edition, though, which is what got me to grab it. Plus it has a ton of artwork. I’m planning to re-read LOTR this winter, so here’s my copy of The Hobbit for that project.

Treasury of the Lost Litterbox, Darby Conley. New. Because I love me some Get Fuzzy!

And that’s about it. What I did on my Fall Vacation, 2010. Next stop: a tentative Winter Vacation in January!

(More photos available on my Flickr photostream. I didn’t use them all here.)

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September 20, 2010October 3, 2021

Rails to Trails

As much as I love living in the Buffalo Southtowns, one thing I’ve always missed about this particular part of our region is the general lack of bike paths. Most of the best bike paths in the Buffalo region are north or east of the city — the paths along the river, Ellicott Creek, and in other points therein, mostly. Down here, there really aren’t any good bike paths. (Not to say that there’s no good biking down here; it’s just not of the “path” variety.)

Well, via Brian Castner of WNYMedia.net, I’ve learned that there’s an effort underway to transform the very abandoned railroad I blogged about last winter into a bike path. This would be a wonderful development. That railway runs through some of this region’s most beautiful country. I hope this happens more than I hoped for Bass Pro. (Well, that’s probably setting the bar pretty low, but…yeah, I want the trail!)

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September 6, 2010October 3, 2021

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, stepping out your door….

After a summer that has seen a surprising amount of weather that’s been truly unpleasant — from our cool-and-rainy June to our incredibly hot-and-humid July — we finally got a welcome taste of autumnal cool this weekend. Or, as I like to call it, “overalls weather”. The highs were in the upper 50s and it was quite windy; and with The Daughter out of town with her grandparents, I took advantage of a perfect opportunity to venture out for once in overalls instead of shorts, look around my environs a bit and learn a little more about Orchard Park, the town I’ve called “home” for seven years now. This is, actually, one of my favorite pastimes.

So, yesterday, I went to Green Lake.

Green Lake is a small artificial lake in the southern part of town. It runs east-to-west, and is bordered on its northern shore by a park called Yates Park, which is the location for most of the big town festival-type events. (Except for July 4th fireworks — it’s too heavily wooded for those.) I’ve driven through Yates Park and along the north shore of Green Lake quite a few times, but I’ve never stopped to explore, until yesterday, when I learned, among other things, that in lieu of a town municipal swimming pool, Orchard Park has a swimming area in its lake.

I never knew this before. Why not? Who knows? But once again, it amazes me how many details about my own town have escaped me after a number of years living here.

Now, Green Lake is not very big. I’m not entirely sure on this point, but when comparing Green Lake on Google Maps to Thoreau’s famous Walden Pond in Concord, MA, at the same level of resolution, Walden Pond looks substantially bigger. So with Green Lake, we’re not talking about a juggernaut of a body of water. Just a pleasant artificial lake in the middle of a town.

After I parked and got out to walk, I headed for an overlook that’s caught my eye several times when driving by. But I was instead captivated by the dam that creates the lake, and the stream that the dam blocks and which spills over the dam on its way through to Lake Erie. The dam isn’t big, at all, and its back side is not a sharp drop but a long, gentle decline away from the lake to the bottom of a ravine where the stream bed lies.

The water runs down a slope of concrete that ends after about twenty or thirty feet, and then returns to a very rocky stream bed:

Actually, I suspect that those rocks were placed there and not part of the original stream bed. They seemed rather “artfully arranged” to my eyes.

At the bottom, there’s a small waterfall which spills into a pool. The water was pretty green and sufficiently murky that I couldn’t discern the depth of the pool there:

I suppose it’s probably no more than a couple of feet, which is a shame; I’d love to find a nice secluded swimming hole around here one of these years. Anyway, after the waterfall (I’m being generous here, really — the water falls no more than four feet), the stream babbles on and down, into what looks like a deep forest.

The illusion was spoiled, a bit, by the bits of trash along the stream bed (not much, but enough — a few empty water bottles, a scrap of newspaper) and the graffiti on the trees. Yes, graffiti on the trees. Who knows.

More than that, though, I knew that civilization actually picks up not far beyond that deceptive-looking forest into which the stream flows, and when I got home and checked the stream’s course on Google Maps, I discovered that this stream is the very one I often cross when driving to the nearest giant suburban shopping region (McKinley Mall). And the stream runs just beyond the property line of Ralph Wilson Stadium, on the “tunnel end” of the stadium. Eventually the stream joins another and flows through the harsh kinda-sorta wastelands of the old steel mill regions before emptying into Lake Erie.

Still, it was a lovely place to find, this small piece of nature in the middle of boring old suburbia.

And Yates Park itself seems like a nice place — it has swings…

…and cute little gazebos. Who doesn’t love a cute little gazebo?

Communists, that’s who. Seriously. Look at photographs of old Moscow during the Cold War. You know what you don’t see there? Cute little gazebos. Tell me I’m wrong!

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August 16, 2010October 3, 2021

A Day at the Fair — the report!

So, the other day we enacted one of our favorite annual rituals: a day at the Erie County Fair.

We’ve been going to the Fair ever since 2001 or 2002, the first year we actually lived in the Buffalo area. It’s always been one of our favorite things about living in this area. Our county is populous enough to have a big fair, but it’s also got enough farmland to have a fair that’s got a really nicely agricultural feel to it. We love most things about the fair: walking the Midway, seeing the farm animals, noting the expressions of boredom on the faces of the farmers who have little to do but sit with their animals all day for two weeks, wandering through the various Crafts buildings, sending The Daughter on rides, engaging in lots of Crass Commercialism, and of course, eating a ton of food that really isn’t all that healthy at all. A good day at the Erie County Fair is among the best days one can have, in my opinion. I just wish that the fair was a little bit later each year so it would be a bit cooler. The fair is almost made for overalls — and yet it’s always too hot for overalls when I’m there! Bummer.

We always like to get to the fair early on, before 11:00, when the admission prices are half-off. County fairs are amazing bargains, really, and if you can cut that in half, it’s even more of a bargain. Our first order of business is to walk across the fair to where our favorite corndog stand is located; by tradition, corndogs are always the first thing we eat at the fair.

This year, though, our favorite corndog stand wasn’t where it’s been for the last few years! It seems that they did some offseason renovating and stuff at that end of the Fair, where the animals and the rides for smaller kids are located, so our favorite corndog stand was moved somewhere else. I didn’t see where until later…but luckily, there was still a different corndog place not that far from where our favorite used to be, so that’s where we went. Unfortunately, the corndogs at the new places are smaller than the ones we’re used to, but they were still tasty.

After this, it was off to see animals. We always wander quickly through the pig and cow exhibition buildings, because…well, there’s just so much staring at pork or beef (or milk) one can stand. Of greater interest to us each year, though, is the building that hosts ducks, swans, chickens, and The Wife’s beloved rabbits.

The Wife raised rabbits in her youth, so she always has a good time checking those out. We also check out the goats and sheep, which I never find all that interesting (but The Wife and The Daughter do). Somehow we missed llamas this year. No idea where they were. I love llamas. Llamas rule!

Shortly after seeing the animals (and a new show this year featuring Sea Lions), it was the first of many snack times. One snack we always get at the fair is a bag of freshly made kettle corn. A big bag.

A big bag.

No, we don’t eat the whole thing. Not even close! We still have about half the bag left, and that’s after The Wife and I had some more last night when she got home from work. (Kettle corn stays tasty for a surprisingly long time.)

Essential every year is the Crafts building, which is always chock full of wonderful items. This is where people who grow orchids and African violets and ivy topiaries display their creations, as well as lots of floral arrangements and gladiolas. There are displays of sewing, knitting, and crocheting; there are paintings and quilting and photography. We always linger in this building for quite a while (and not just because it’s air conditioned!).

One favorite thing of mine in this building, which I only really noticed last year, are the dioramas and the place settings, which are always organized around specific themes. This year, one of the themes was Star Wars! This was terrific. I loved these:

Erie County Fair: Dioramas and Place Settings I

The big flower is, I suppose, meant to suggest the planet from Revenge of the Sith with the enormous flowers that obscure our view of the clone troopers’ murder of that female Jedi. Cool!

Next up were the place settings, which were themed “Lunch with Luke”. I loved this one:

Erie County Fair: Dioramas and Place Settings IV

Black and white for the Good and Dark Sides of the Force, obviously — and the napkin is folded in the shape of a Star Destroyer! That’s awesome.

Here’s another that I liked:

Erie County Fair: Dioramas and Place Settings V

One of the critical notes on the little card there reads, “Mug is slightly oversized”. This struck me as silly, since the stoneware is obviously a set. What was the artist supposed to do? Shrink the mug?

Then there were the table displays which were themed to different movies. This one, I think, really got the idea of American Graffiti:

Erie County Fair: Dioramas and Place Settings VIII

When I saw this one, however, I laughed out loud:

Erie County Fair: Dioramas and Place Settings VII

If the movie being themed were, say, Julie and Julia, I could see what’s being done here. But the actual movie being themed here was The French Connection. I can only assume the author didn’t see the movie, or even look up what it was about?

Another favorite place of ours (which we actually missed last year) is the Woodcarving building. There is some stunning work being done out there. I was amazed at some of it, like this:

And this:

Later on, while we waited for the daily parade, we decided to have The Daughter take our picture. This, proved a bit problematic, though, as The Daughter tends to not say anything to indicate when she’s about to snap the photo, so we end up with results like this:

But we got the kinks ironed out:

Then the parade started, with the mounted cops, the marching band, Shriners in little cars:

And horse-drawn wagons such as this calliope organ:

After the parade, it was time to check out the horse barns (which are on the side of the fairgrounds completely opposite the rest of the farm animals):

By this time, night was setting, so after a dinner of Chiavetta’s barbecue chicken (and a couple of hours after a snack of pizza for the kid and a pulled pork sandwich for The Wife and I), it was time for rides on the Midway:

“Rides”, for us, translates to watching The Daughter do the bumper cars ten times. That is no exaggeration: she did those things ten times. Kids do the bumper cars and then, when the ride ends, get out and sprint for the entrance to go on again. Wow.

The one ride we all do as a family is riding the Giant Wheel, which I love but which I suspect The Wife and Daughter don’t love quite as much as I do. I just think the Midway is beautiful from above:

And, toward the end of the night, one final culinary indulgence: the amazing wonder that is a giant plate of Ribbon Fries!

So…what else? Well, there’s the Antique Mall, where we always spend a bit of time looking at old stuff. This is actually a small satellite location of a much larger antiques store that is located just a mile from Casa Jaquandor. I bought The Wife a pair of earrings there this time (pearls, to match the pearl necklace I bought her last Christmas). There were the other buildings full of Wares Being Hawked, although I did notice that the selling this time was more geared toward demonstration-type sales than actual booths selling stuff. We missed out on some vendors we’ve enjoyed in years past, only to find them missing this time. We also omitted our customary trip through the Native American “village” (a section of the park devoted to Native American art and culture). Not sure why we skipped this, other than that we just decided to do other stuff and never found time to make it back there.

I’m sure I’m forgetting about some stuff, but I think that sums up the day we had at the Erie County Fair pretty well. I’m sad that it’s over for another year…but hey, next up is the Ithaca Apple Festival in October! Huzzah!

(See my Flickr photostream for more photos that I didn’t use in this post.)

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August 12, 2010October 3, 2021

I really hope he wasn’t trying out for “Hell’s Kitchen”

Well, I see that Buffalo has hit the national news wire again, this time for the actions of one of our fine citizens. Sigh:

Buffalo police rescued a cat from a Cheektowaga man who apparently was planning to make a meal out of his pet because he thought it was ill-tempered, authorities said Monday.

When Ferry-Fillmore District officers pulled over a car driven by Gary L. Korkuc on Sunday night during a traffic stop, they said they heard a cat crying from inside the trunk and investigated.

What they found has left animal lovers at the SPCA Serving Erie County in shock.

The cat, according to police, was in a cage “marinating” in a mixture of crushed red peppers, chili pepper, salt and oil.

Errrr…OK then.

Apparently the guy likes his spicy food, though: crushed peppers, chili pepper, and salt. Of course, I find out about this the same day that the finale of Hell’s Kitchen airs, and another episode of Master Chef, so even as a cat lover who is appalled by the very idea of this, I can’t help but be somehow amused at the culinary line of thought here.

The tale has a happy ending, though: the cat was adopted already by someone who isn’t planning to cook him.

“I got him home now, and he’s just looking and exploring like crazy,” she said Tuesday night. “He’s really passive and not aggressive at all.”

He has a new bed, a new litter box and a new name: Oliver.

“He’s all black, but he has white under his chin, on all his paws and on his chest,” Dankowski said. “They bathed him so many times to get the spices out, so he feels so soft. He’s absolutely beautiful.”

OK, I’m sorry, but there’s just something a bit morbidly funny about all this. There just is. I’m envisioning a woman holding her new cat on her lap, stroking his back and his chin, enjoying his purring…and starting to get a hankering for a pizza….